Apr 7, 2014

China is one of the largest smartphone markets in the world. Aside from the well-known handset manufacturers that are present in most parts of the world, Chinese OEMs are flooding the market in the Mainland with very cheap devices.

NEO is such a company that launches cheap but powerful smartphones in China. The company’s roadmap is unknown for the most part, except for those moments when NEO comes forward with official statements confirming the upcoming release of a new device. Sometime pictures of new, unannounced products leak ahead of these official announcements and generate lots of rumors regarding NEO’s lineup of smartphones. The newest device announced by NEO is simply called M1 and has been confirmed to be officially introduced in China on April 10. However, before the official announcement could go live, a picture of an alleged M1 powered by Windows Phone has leaked on the Chinese forums, GizmoChina reports. Contrary to what Windows Phone fans expected, NEO has only announced the upcoming release of the M1 powered by the Android operating system.

For the time being, it’s unclear whether or not this is a mistake from NEO’s part or the image is a fake with the sole purpose of increasing the hype around Windows Phone platform. We believe that there’s only a small chance that NEO would be releasing a Windows Phone smartphone soon, especially due to the fact that it will need to pack a Qualcomm chipset inside, which is a bit more expensive than the MediaTek SoC used in its devices. Most, if not all, NEO smartphones are equipped with MediaTek chipset and powered by Android operating system, but MediaTek’s 1.3GHz quad-core MT6582 processor included within the M1 is not yet supported by Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform.

However, the NEO M1 powered by Windows Phone may have a Qualcomm chipset in the end due to the fact that Microsoft made its mobile platform available for free, thus the Chinese OEM will cut costs on manufacturing these devices. For your information, the newly announced NEO M1 will ship with Android operating system out of the box and will be equipped with a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6582 processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal memory. The smartphone will also sport a 5-inch HD (720p) IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display and an impressive 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with Sony Exmor R sensor. NEO M1 has been confirmed to feature a “super slim” metal chassis and a 2000 mAh battery.